


I'll Give You What You Need

by IamShadow21



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Community: omnijaxual, Futuristic Technology, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Technophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-20
Updated: 2009-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IamShadow21/pseuds/IamShadow21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just a piece of tech, nothing more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Give You What You Need

**Author's Note:**

> Could be set any time in pre-Reset S2.
> 
> Don't really know if this is porny enough for [omnijaxual](http://omnijaxual.livejournal.com), but it was written for it, and Jack does get laid. So you'll have to deal with the fact that it went kind of melancholy and introspective.

It wasn't exactly the most impressive looking piece of tech they'd come across, although there was a certain elegance to it. Slender and ergonomic, it was designed to fit neatly into an adult human hand, with the single button nestled under the thumb. It should have been pulsing a gentle amber hue, but it was dark and inert.

Jack sighed regretfully and stroked the soft curve of it with a fingertip. "Beautiful," he whispered.

"Do you two want some time alone?" Owen asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm. 

Jack glanced up and met the gazes of his team. Owen looked bored. Tosh looked slightly jealous of Jack touching the new-found tech, since she hadn't had a chance to play with it yet. Both Gwen and Ianto appeared as though their thoughts weren't entirely suitable for a staff meeting. Sure, it was subtle on Ianto's face, but Jack could tell.

"It's beautiful," Jack repeated more casually, though his fingertips didn't leave the object's surface.

"Do you know what it is?" Tosh asked, mind clearly still far more focussed on the task than the rest of them. "Is it alien?"

Jack shook his head. "No, but it might as well be. Human medical technology from at least a thousand years in the future, possibly even fifteen hundred."

Owen perked up at the word 'medical', but his face fell again when Jack continued.

"It's dead, though."

"Dead?" Gwen asked, her brow furrowing. "You just said it was medical equipment."

"Semi-organic sentient technology," Ianto said smoothly. "Like the Mainframe."

Gwen visibly tried to come to terms with the very real existence of living computers. It might have been funny if Jack hadn't been focussed sadly on the tech in his hands.

"Maybe it was killed by the journey through the Rift. These things don't just wear out, or die of old age. It must have been jolted by a massive surge of Rift energy and perished under the strain."

Owen was clearly uncomfortable with the sentimental turn to the meeting. "So... do I autopsy it, or does Tosh shove it in the Beckaran scanner?"

"Neither," Jack said, gripping the artifact a little tighter at the idea of it being dissected so impersonally. "We'll just...Oh. Ohhhhh..."

Jack flushed, and through a haze, he saw that the button beneath his thumb was glowing a warm and steady orange.

Not dead, he realised. Sleeping. Now awake, and active.

"Jack?" Ianto asked. Jack, not sir.

Another liquid rush of sensation, and he let out a shuddering breath. With the last shred of conscious control, he looked deep into Ianto's eyes.

"Don't be afraid," he ground out.

Then the world fell away.

***

He floated for the longest time, and for no time at all. He wasn't Jack, he wasn't Torchwood, or a time Agent, or even the boy from Boeshane. He just was.

She was in him and around him like smoke, like briars, like the best kind of drug. Of course, she wasn't even a she or a he, but she felt and smelled and tasted like vanilla and lemons and leather and the sweet-salty tang of cunt, and he drank in the sensations with the hunger of learning a new lover.

She tickled and sensed him all over, and he opened up to her like a flower. There was a trickling chime, almost a laugh, and he laughed too, and then she found the deepest, darkest, sweetest spot in him and poured herself inside until he broke open altogether.

***

Jack was shaking, panting hard and blinking blindly when he came back to himself. He couldn't have been gone long; Owen and Ianto had clearly only just risen out of their seats.

"Jack?" Ianto asked again, his worry barely guarded.

Gwen's eyes were huge, Tosh looked a little embarrassed.

"We should contain that," Owen said, eyeing the artifact distrustfully. The button had reverted back to its gently pulsing default state. "And I need to examine you."

"I'm fine," Jack insisted hurriedly. "It's fine. It's... harmless. No scans or probes without my clearance, though. You might hurt it. I think we're done."

Ignoring a couple of startled protests to the contrary from his team, Jack rapidly departed from the meeting room. First stop, his quarters, for a clean pair of pants.

***

Jack couldn't help but watch back the CCTV footage from the meeting room when he had a spare moment and the rest of the team were otherwise occupied. Part of it was genuine scientific curiosity, but there was definitely a generous portion of self-voyeurism going on, too. He had a healthy appreciation for his own physical form, and seeing himself get off had never been a bad experience.

At first, it was rather uneventful. After his words to Ianto, he froze up, unmoving, barely breathing, while several of his team said his name, and Ianto and Owen rose from their chairs. Then, Jack watched the breath rush out of himself, accompanied by a full body shiver and a low, protracted moan that made Ianto flush to the tips of his ears.

When his on screen self fled, those left behind coughed and shuffled and looked around anywhere else but at each other.

"Did he really just...?" Owen began.

All eyes turned to Ianto.

"Work to do in the Archives," Ianto mumbled, and departed just as quickly.

Pity, Jack thought. He'd obviously missed Ianto running away to have a stealthy wank. He'd just have to corner him later.

***

Over the next few days, the artifact passed through several different pairs of hands.

Tosh was first, garnering permission from Jack to perform some low level scans and basic measurements that Jack was certain wouldn't harm the organism inside. She handled the artifact with such precision and care - as much for the technology as for the sentience - that Jack was almost convinced that she wouldn't do anything with it. 

It wasn't until late at night when the Hub was mostly powered down and he and Ianto were out hunting together that Tosh took the plunge. She put her computer into standby, laid her reading glasses on the desk, then picked up the artifact with a confidence that belied the nervousness on her face. A push of the button, and the lines on her forehead smoothed. She let out a gentle sigh and the tension seemed to drain from her. The tight angles of her shoulders sloped down, and she stretched like a cat. Leaving the artifact on her desk with a farewell pat, she didn't linger any longer, but picked up her bag and left for the evening. She didn't arrive the next morning until just before the others, and Jack gave her a spontaneous hug when she greeted him with a warm smile.

***

Owen didn't mess about with pretences of scans or tests. The moment he was convinced he was alone in the Autopsy Room, he pushed the button with determination.

A few seconds later, he burst out laughing. Not a sarcastic, bitter laugh, but a genuine peal of happiness that left him gasping for breath.

"What's so funny?" Gwen called out from her own desk.

Owen let out a final shaky giggle. "Just reading the results of your last physical, darling," he quipped, but it had less of an edge than his retorts usually did.

Gwen called him a bastard, and rather than getting nasty, Owen simply agreed, "You're not wrong, there."

As he cut neatly into the latest alien cadaver, he began to whistle.

***

Gwen, as per usual, was sneaky. Or rather, thought she was being sneaky, when everyone knew what she was doing.

A rather blatantly bad sleight of hand to palm the artifact, then she ducked into the toilets.

A few minutes later she emerged with a rather thoughtful look on her face. She spent the rest of the afternoon in a bit of a daze, then clocked off early to go home for dinner rather than lingering.

Jack watched her go, then made his way downstairs to the vaults.

***

Ianto was standing staring at the artifact flat on his palm as though it might reveal its secrets under intense scrutiny.

"Aren't you going to push the button?" Jack asked.

Ianto's eyebrow twitched. "Very poor discipline of me if I did, sir," Ianto said.

"Jack," Jack reminded him. "Everybody else has."

Ianto snorted. The eyebrow raised properly this time. "Medical equipment, Jack?"

"You don't believe me?"

"From what I saw... I can't really think of a practical application. Besides an aid at a futuristic sperm bank, that is," Ianto mocked gently.

"My response wasn't a typical one," Jack replied, untroubled. "It was... grateful to me. It had been alone a long time. I let it in."

Ianto still looked unconvinced. Jack stepped forward, wrapped his hand around Ianto's, closing it on the artifact. Ianto didn't pull away, but he did stiffen slightly, and Jack could feel the trace of fear. 

He grinned. "Trust me."

And squeezed.

Ianto froze, his breath caught in his throat. He hung that way for a long moment before blinking slowly, then stumbling a little, his limbs gone slack and floppy.

"Got you," Jack said, bracing Ianto until his balance was steady, though his cheeks were pale and his eyes wide.

"What... how... I don't understand," Ianto finally said.

"In the future, they'll tap into everything up here," Jack said, touching his temple. "This was developed for palliative care. No morphine, no sedatives. Just a little device that nudges the happy button in your brain whenever you need it. Pushes all those pain-killing mood-enhancing chemicals round the body, making the last days of the dying a little easier. Better than anything cooked up in a lab or squashed into tablet form."

Ianto's eyes were fixed on the little device, his thumb circling the edges of the button like the areola of a nipple. It was intimate and breathtakingly erotic.

"It won't work again for you," Jack said gently, and Ianto looked devastated. He didn't even try to hide it. "Safety system," Jack explained. "It's like a drug. People got hooked on them until they put the safety in. If you're ill or injured, it'll open up again for you, but not when you're well." Jack trailed a fingertip down the length of the device, incidentally brushing Ianto's skin here and there.

"Why would it open up for someone in the first place, then? If they don't need it?" Ianto asked, clearly equal parts puzzled and bereft.

Jack smiled. "That wasn't for your benefit," he explained. "That was for hers."

The others might have asked for a greater explanation, for reasons or for the mechanics behind the whole creation. Ianto just accepted it and nodded, bending over the desk to finish writing the report for the Archives.

It wasn't until later that night, twined around each other in the camp bed under Jack's office in the dark, that he said any more about it.

"She sang for me," Ianto whispered. "Like cinnamon and scarlet and gunpowder all mixed up together."

Jack knew not to answer. He just smoothed a hand across Ianto's shoulderblades, a subtle, physical 'I understand' that seemed to give Ianto the comfort he needed to settle and sleep.


End file.
